1. Why a programme view?
Why TESTA?
Professor Tansy Jessop
TESTA Workshop
Trinity College Dublin
9 February 2017
2. Jottings
1. One thing you already know about TESTA
2. One problem you have faced with assessment
3. One problem you have faced with feedback
4. One blue sky idea to address a problem
3. What I am hoping to achieve today
1. Brief overview of TESTA
2. Why people find it useful
3. Three problems TESTA addresses
4. Four themes in the data
5. Solutions: a taster
9. Three problemsThree problems
Problem 1: Something awry not sure why
Problem 2: Curriculum design problem
Problem 3: The problem of educational change
18. Curriculum privileges ‘knowing’ stuff
“Content is often the most visible aspect
for students, the control of which is
frequently devolved to individual
academics, who receive little or no training
in curriculum design and planning”
(Blackmore and Kandiko 2014, 7).
20. Problem 3: Educational change problem
Three misguided assumptions:
1. There is not enough high
quality data.
2. Data will do it
3. Academics will buy it.
http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/study-overview/
21. Proving is different from improving
“It is incredibly difficult to translate assessment
evidence into improvements in student learning”
“It’s far less risky and complicated to analyze data
than it is to act”
(Blaich & Wise, 2011)
22. Paradigm What it looks like
Technical rational Focus on data and tools
Relational Focus on people
Emancipatory Focus on systems and structures
23. TESTA themes and impacts
1. Variations in assessment patterns
2. High summative: low formative
3. Disconnected feedback
4. Lack of clarity about goals and standards
24. Defining the terms
• Summative assessment carries a grade which
counts toward the degree classification.
• Formative assessment does not count
towards the degree (either pass/fail or a
grade), elicits comments and is required to be
done by all students.
25. 1. Huge variations
• What is striking for
you about this data?
• How does it compare
with your context?
• Does variation
matter?
26. Assessment features across a 3 year UG degree (n=73)
Characteristic Range
Summative 12 -227
Formative 0 - 116
Varieties of assessment 5 - 21
Proportion of examinations 0% - 87%
Time to return marks & feedback 10 - 42 days
Volume of oral feedback 37 -1800 minutes
Volume of written feedback 936 - 22,000 words
27. Theme 2: High summative: low formative
• Summative ‘pedagogies of control’
• Circa 2 per module in UK
• Ratio of 1:8 of formative to summative
• Formative weakly understood and practised
29. What students say about high summative
• A lot of people don’t do wider reading. You just focus
on your essay question.
• In Weeks 9 to 12 there is hardly anyone in our
lectures. I'd rather use those two hours of lectures to
get the assignment done.
• It’s been non-stop assignments, and I’m now free of
assignments until the exams – I’ve had to rush every
piece of work I’ve done.
30. What students say about formative
• If there are no actual consequences of not
doing it, most students are going to sit in the
bar.
• The lecturers do formative assessment but we
don’t get any feedback on it.
31. Actions based on evidence
1. Rebalance summative and formative
2. Programme approach
3. Formative in the public domain
4. Linking formative and summative
5. Risky, creative, challenging tasks
6. Students reading and producing more
7. Deeper understanding of value of formative
33. Take five
• Choose a quote that
strikes you.
• What is the key issue?
• What strategies might
address this issue?
34. What students say…
It’s difficult because your assignments are so detached
from the next one you do for that subject. They don’t
relate to each other.
Because it’s at the end of the module, it doesn’t feed into
our future work.
Because they have to mark so many that our essay
becomes lost in the sea that they have to mark.
It was like ‘Who’s Holly?’ It’s that relationship where
you’re just a student.
35. Actions based on evidence
• Conversation: who starts the dialogue?
• Iterative cycles of reflection across modules
• Quick generic feedback: the ‘Sherlock’ factor
• Feedback synthesis tasks
• Technology: audio, screencast and blogging
• From feedback as ‘telling’…
• … to feedback as asking questions
36. Theme 4: Confusion about goals and
standards
• Consistently low scores on the AEQ for clear
goals and standards
• Alienation from the tools, especially criteria
and guidelines
• Symptoms: perceptions of marker variation,
unfair standards and inconsistencies in practice
37. What students say…
We’ve got two tutors- one marks completely differently to
the other and it’s pot luck which one you get.
They have different criteria, they build up their own
criteria.
It’s such a guessing game.... You don’t know what they
expect from you.
They read the essay and then they get a general
impression, then they pluck a mark from the air.
38. Taking action: internalising goals and
standards
• Regular calibration exercises
• Discussion and dialogue
• Discipline specific criteria (no cut and paste)
Lecturers
• Rewrite/co-create criteria
• Marking exercises
• Design and value formative
Lecturers
and students
• Enter secret garden - peer review
• Engage in drafting processes
• Self-reflection
Students
42. References
Blaich, C., & Wise, K. (2011). From Gathering to Using Assessment Results: Lessons from the Wabash
National Study. Occasional Paper #8. University of Illinois: National Institution for Learning Outcomes
Assessment.
Boud, D. and Molloy, E. (2013) ‘Rethinking models of feedback for learning: The challenge of
design’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(6), pp. 698–712. doi:
10.1080/02602938.2012.691462.
Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004) Conditions r which assessment supports students' learning. Learning and
Teaching in Higher Education. 1(1): 3-31.
Harland, T., McLean, A., Wass, R., Miller, E. and Sim, K. N. (2014) ‘An assessment arms race and its
fallout: High-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher
Jessop, T. and Tomas, C. 2016 The implications of programme assessment on student learning.
Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. Published online 2 August 2016.
Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. (2014). The Influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student
learning: a comparative study. Studies in Higher Education. Published Online 27 August 2014
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2014.943170
Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. (2014) The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale
study of students’ learning in response to different assessment patterns. Assessment and Evaluation in
Higher Education. 39(1) 73-88.
Nicol, D. (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher
education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35: 5, 501 – 517.
O'Donovan, B , Price, M. and Rust, C. (2008) 'Developing student understanding of assessment
standards: a nested hierarchy of approaches', Teaching in Higher Education, 13: 2, 205 — 217
Sadler, D. R. (1989) ‘Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems’, Instructional
Science, 18(2), pp. 119–144. doi: 10.1007/bf00117714.
Notas del editor
How do you measure soft stuff? 5 day cricket match versus 20/20
What started as a research methodology has become a way of thinking. David Nicol – changing the discourse, the way we think about assessment and feedback; not only technical, research, mapping, also shaping our thinking. Evidence, assessment principles. Habermas framework.
I realised what we were saying was ‘That’s only two per module’. And I was like ‘Ah, but that’s the point. This is a programmatic thing and you’re used to thinking about a module’
(Programme Leader, American Studies).
Data – persistent problem A&F scores. Traffic light systems – green for good. DVC find the people wo are doing well so we can share best practice. Three programmes. Neil McCaw
Data – persistent problem A&F scores. Traffic light systems – green for good. DVC find the people wo are doing well so we can share best practice. Three programmes. Neil McCaw
Honest dialogue vs tricks of dialogue to minimise damage
Hard to make connections, difficult to see the joins between assessments, much more assessment, much more assessment to accredit each little box. Multiplier effect. Less challenge, less integration. Lots of little neo-liberal tasks. The Assessment Arms Race.
Language of ‘covering material’ Should we be surprised?
Wabash study – 2005-2011, 17,000 students in 49 American colleges. 60-70 publications Critical thinking, moral reasoning, leadership towards social justice, engagement in diversity, deep intellectual work.
TESTA has done the data and that’s been useful. Ideological compromises. Mixed methods approaches. Critical pedagogy sleeping with the enemy. Democratic, participatory, liberating curriculum and pedagogy. Teachers and students shape and change education. Resist managerialism and the market. Risky pedagogies.
Teach Less, learn more. Assess less, learn more.
Students can increase their understanding of the language of assessment through their active engagement in: ‘observation, imitation, dialogue and practice’ (Rust, Price, and O’Donovan 2003, 152), Dialogue, clever strategies, social practice, relationship building, relinquishing power.